Defaced Rothko: man charged with criminal damage

A Polish man has been charged with criminal damage after Rothko's Black on Maroon was defaced at Tate Britain. Photograph: Posted on Twitter

A man has been charged with criminal damage after a Mark Rothko mural was defaced at London's Tate Modern gallery on Sunday.

26-year-old Polish national Vladimir Umanets, also known as Wlodzimierz Umaniec, was charged with one count of criminal damage in excess of £5,000 and will appear before magistrates at Camberwell Green on Wednesday morning.

Umanets, of no fixed abode, was arrested on Monday in Worthing by Sussex police, acting on behalf of the Metropolitan police.

The Tate Modern was briefly closed and a police investigation was launched after a man inscribed a number of words in black ink in a corner of Rothko's 1958 work, Black on Maroon.

The artist's children, Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko, released a statement on Monday in which they said that they were "greatly troubled" by the incident on Sunday.

"Our father donated his legendary Seagram paintings to the museum in 1969, sensing the commitment of the institution to his work and impressed by the warm embrace it had received from the British public," they said.

"We are heartened to have felt that embrace again in the outpouring of distress and support that we and our father have received both directly and in public forums."

The Tate has said that it does not have a price for the piece, but paintings by Rothko often fetch tens of millions of pounds.

Earlier this year, his Orange, Red, Yellow was sold for £53.8m, the highest price paid for a piece of post-war art at auction, after it went under the hammer at Christie's in New York.